The only decent piece of evidence presented by the author that could be seen as supporting her thesis of a Zuni-Japanese connection are some apparent language similarities, and even with that she does admit that there is a problem with ensuring that her transcriptions of Zuni and Japanese words into the Latin alphabet are truly accurate representations of how the Zuni and Japanese say those words. The rest of the evidence ranges from intriguing-but-weak to downright laughable. But the book does offer some good background information on the Zuni people in general, which just manages to save it from being a waste of time.

The author suggests that medieval Japanese sea-goers arrived just in time to join the Zuni Native Americans in their search for the center of the world. The Japanese, according to the author, were also on a search for the Western Paradise of the Jodo Shu and Shin-Shu Buddhists. Somehow these two searches became one and the Japanese group over time became part of the Zuni genetic and cultural heritage. Davis points to linguistic, genetic and cultural parallels between the Zuni and the Japanese, reconsiders ancient stories of the Zuni, and presents some dubious artifacts as evidence for her claims. I found myself wishing for more evidence more clearly presented. Still, the thesis is intriguing enough to warrant four stars.

Not unlike Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, Nancy Yaw Davis, after decades of research, has been on a five-year journey to write this book and has returned with "my theory of a thousand themes". Did a group of thirteenth-century Japanese pilgrims journey to the American Southwest, there to merge with the people, language, and religion of the Zuni tribe? The beauty of this book is that she is a very articulate guide as she takes you back through time in order to understand the present. Why does the Japanese imperial emblem (the Chrysanthemum) look so much like the Zuni sacred rosette? Why are the nearby Hopi Indians the only ones that do sand paintings and why are they similar to Tibetan Buddhist mandalas? Why do the earliest pottery fragments in the New World occur near the tip of South America and not near the Bering Strait? Why do the Zunis and the Japanese share a rare kidney disease? Why did the Zuni veteran of World War II and a prisoner of the Japanese say: "I always wondered why I spoke Japanese so easily"? With 227 pages of easily read text, 98 figures, maps and tables, 49 pages of endnotes and 31 pages of bibliography, she offers the evidence and asks the scientific community to open their minds and begin to think differently. How many Ph.D. candidates will do their thesis on the evidence she offers and the many questions she asks? A good read for everyone and great conversation enhancer.

I read this book many years ago for an American Literature class and am now rereading it for an American History class. I enjoyed it the first time and am enjoying it now. The writing is fluid, entertaining; the points made are profound. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about Winthrop and the early Puritan immigrants--a quick, pleasurable read.

The impact of the Puritans on America is fascinating. The world has thrown millions of immigrants onto American shores over the centuries, but those millions have never quite diluted out the foundational impact of those 20,000 that came during the great migration. Regrettably, most Americans are not born again, but because the founders of New England were biblically minded people, the United States has inherited the ideals of family values, education, care for the less fortunate, accountability in governnment, liberty of conscience, reward for hard work and honest business dealings. Among the nations, we still stand as a beacon of hope because of these ideals. God used a few people fully devoted to His Word to do marvelous works and a wonder.
How exciting it is to watch the mind of Winthrop wrestle with the same issues that modern Christians wrestle with-how to best be salt and light TO the world without being OF the world. His response was to build a city on a hill, a New Jerusalem, a holy priesthood--and the world has never been the same.

Edmund Morgan was an excellent writer, and it shows through in this book.

This book was used as the text for my junior year AP history class, and it is absolutely awful. The book is extremely difficult to read because there is so much unnecessary information crammed into each section and the authors seemed more interested in simply recording facts than making a coherent assessment of history. My teachers agreed that this book is difficult, uninteresting, and poorly edited and are looking for a new text.

I love history and was excited to take the AP History course but I could not focus on this book for more than five minutes without becoming sleepy and losing focus. The book does present accurate and extensive facts covering the history of the US from pre-colonization to the mid-1990's, but there has got to be a better way to learn them.

I am now a junior in high school and this is the book I use as the main textual reference for my AP US History Class. I agree with Amanda, this book is boring (but there are times when the author of a particular section shows a sense of humor). It is crammed with names of people, places and pieces of legislation that are never explained and, at times, appear to be irrelevant. I read a lot of supplementary material, but still do not have the time to familiarize myself with everything mentioned in the book. It is my opinion that some of the space in this book could have been used for better explanations of specific events rather than a place where the author could list everything (s)he knew about the time period in that BAM, BAM, BAM way (sorry, I have no other way of explaining how that book reads, sometimes it's like an index of events, except not alphabetized).

This text provides the necessary background and factual information to successfully instruct the 11th grade Advanced Placement United States History course throughout the world. Included in the text are appreciated charts, maps, and illustrations.

The text includes all that is necessary for the student and teacher dedicting themselves in combination to fulfill what is needed to score well enough on the national Advanced Placement examination to earn college credit.

The 8th edition includes American History well into the last decade of the 20th Century.

While this book actually does represent a major step up
in terms of detail compared to the "Gold Standard" First Aid for Usmle, the current print seems little premature to me (even though it states to be a "Revised Reprint", since I could find a substantial number of significant mistakes while just going through it ONCE. Since I am not really an expert, I would bet
that someone with a more thorough background knowledge in Pathology, Biochemistry and Behavioral Sciences for example

would find countless more mistakes than I did.

Generally I would recommend this book only to people, who are VERY advanced in their studies for the Step 1, so that they can be sure to filter out these substantial mistakes and do not attempt to memorize wrong stuff. But then again : why would you buy a review book, if you knew already everything so perfectly that you could immediately recognize these mistakes ?

Ömer Gök

Since i'm a relatively old IMG I was delighted when I discovered this book, so I bought it and I personally used it for my step 1 preparation, FORTUNATELY I discovered it late.....since if I'd have trused just in this book (I mean without First Aid)..I'd have failed....so b VERY careful....if u use this book for specific clinical situations (their tables in anemia, different cancer types etc) its great...but eventhough u will need first aid as a guide for the remainder. In my exam physiology and pharmacology were heavily tested and these guys almost forgot these subjects, on the other hand their pathology is excellent. Their pharmacology is quite poor, they ignored mechanisms of action of the different drugs (quite HY in USMLE). So if u use this book being aware of these problems and especially as a quick review only before the exam it should be OK.

I used this book in addition to the Kaplan series. I felt this was ideal in the week prior to the exam, and was superior to first aid. There are several mistakes in the text, but between this text and kaplan I crushed the exam. I would not recommend this text to anyone who is weak in pharmacology!

I was deeply disappointed in this dumb book, but I should of known better just by seeing the word journal in the title of the book. I was hoping to get some input on Albania and its culture and this book didn't do that. It was like reading someones personal travel journal. This book is money down the toilet, Oh well!

Edmund Keeley's sharp eye and even sharper intelligence conspire in this slim if somewhat pricey memoir to suggest that where there are humans there is hope. This is a journal of of Keeley's short trip to Albania in the late 90s to take part in a television interview, part of a mutual co-operation project in which US writers are supposed to help Albanian writers to get their act under way and Albanian writers are supposed to offer similar help to their American counterparts. But the author's sensibility takes in a lot more. We get a glimpse of empty, weed-grown lots, refuse in the streets and a people totally unprepared for participation in the democratic process. Keeley writes about adventure and discovery and harks back frequently to the annotations of Edward Lear, the 19th landscape painter who found things even darker and dirtier than Keeley does. But the author makes it clear that hope for the future lies in the bright and cultured people who have still not sunk into the despair that afflicts most of their compatriots. Outside the cities there is still much beauty in the mountains and rolling hills, but their real beauty is that they roll into Greece, where the author's serious emotional energy has always been heavily and rightly invested. This trip necessarily involves contacts with stiff and boring diplomatic personnel and involvement in their also boring social functions. But there are exceptions to this: a few of the Americans living in Albania in an official capacity are genuinely likeable. The Albanian Bujar Hudhri is the principal interpreter and host for Keeley and his companions, and he is certainly likeable, but is put upon from all sides in a country where directives from above usually lack any sense of pragmatic reason. Interesting are Keeley's reflections and meditations on history and literature, inspired by just about anything, including the lumpy bed in his less than attractive hotel room. This work is recommendable for anyone interested in travel writing of the finer sort. Keeley always writes beautifully.

We use this book in my Linear Algebra class, and i really dont like it. The book is pretty terse, and doesnt explain things very clearly. Text needs to be re-read several times to understand the concepts. If you can get a more detailed book on the subject with clearer explanations.

Linear Algebra is the core of computer vision related research. I highly recommend this book for people who are willing to make research in this field.

An interesting title, for an interesting molecule. Too bad the supplement doesn't work in athletes. Too bad there is not direct science to supporty it. To bad each study examing the effects of d-Ribose come up empty - kind of like your wallet if you buy the produc or this book.

Burkes book is the only book to be found on this important supplement. Ribose is a carbo found naturally in the cells of the body. Physical stress can increase the loss of nucleotides (such as ATP, ADP and AMP) from the heart and skeletal muscles. Ribose helps prevent the loss of these. Those of us who exercise strenuously need to supplement because our environment is toxic and our lives are stressful; therefore we need additional boosts to keep our bodies healthy. This book is information packed but quite the bargain.

I bought this book as a study guide to a course in Renaissance literature, and Spenser in particular. I have now found that it is incomplete! Canto II of Book II only has 11 verses out of 46! Moreover, Cantos 4, 5 and 6 of Book II are completely missing! It does say 'Selection' in the subtitle, I now realize, although it was not made clear in the original description. The volume is doing me little to no good for its intended purpose. I consider it a waste of time and a deception to leave out huge parts of a work you are purporting to present under its original title. I feel cheated. Why wasn't the title "Bits and Pieces of The Faerie Queen"??

As a freshman student who is enrolled in English Literature, I needed all the help I could get,especially with English that is not modern. The Renaissance Version of the Faerie Queene is quite hard to read, and must be read over and over again before you can comprehend all the underlying themes and symbols. This edition, stated in modern English, makes the work so much more enjoyable and easy to understand. Not much is lost through this translation, and it has helped me greatly----especially for exams!

As a devoted fan of the "canon" of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works, I thought "Sherlock Holmes in Dallas" was terrible. It might well be sub-titled "Holmes and Watson Read The Warren Report To Each Other.". The most ridiculous parts are the slanderous chapters about Dallas. Dallas isn't a perfect place, but it's certainly not a place "whose very atmosphere seemed to breathe some menace." It is obvious Mr.Ions was not acquainted with the Oak Cliff section of Dallas where Oswald's rooming house was located, for he mentions the "liquor stores" on the
"drab, suburban streets"......Oak Cliff has been "dry" forever !
I think the book is best summed up with Holmes statement.....
"I said at the outset that I would not be able to solve this, my last case, and I confess a sense of failure." There are a few good chapters, but not really in the best of the Holmes pastiches. Finally, Holmes remarks, "I feel old, Watson...."
No wonder.....if still alive, he would have been 109 years old in 1963. The best that can be said about the book is that it makes for amusing reading if one does not take it too seriously.However, in all fairness, you must credit Mr. Ions with a scholarly reading of the Warren Report and the book can be considered a very good "Reader's Digest" type report for quick reference without resorting to one's reading of all the 26 volumes of that report.

This book presents a scholarly analysis of the events surrounding the JFK assassination, in a readable format--while faithfully capturing the essence of interplay between Holmes and Watson as they might bring their analytical prowess to bear on this historical puzzle. After seeing the movie JFK, I had the distinct impression that someone within the Oliver Stone company had been influenced by this book. This is an ideal book to take to the beach or cottage on a short vacation.

Here's the run down: You've got a emotionally compromised psychic investigator who has been sent to an intellectually compromised town. He's heard creepy stuff has been happening and he's a scientist sent to do his thing. He does everything but behave like one however.

To give him credit, 'ol Herb the author did have some suspense going. But as I was turning the pages, I was grimacing to find out what was next. There was an exceedingly large portion of icky violent scenes. And by ick, I mean things being ripped off, oozing down, cracking apart etc etc... Another con, would be the psychic-link romance quotient... Yeah, who'd a thought.

Unfortunately Herbert somehow fails to capture the imagination in The Ghosts of Sleath as much as he does in most of his other books. The story centres around psychic investigator, David Ash, who delves into mysterious events that are terrorizing the community of Sleath, where he comes across a dark character called Phelan. Though the premise of the book is sound, and though there are solid descriptions, somehow Herbert doesn't quite capture the imagination. Maybe it's that word 'solid' that gives the clue.

None of Herbert's books could be called weak, and I'd like to give this one three-and-a-half stars, but The Ghosts of Sleath doesn't quite come up to the spendid page-gripping terror that this author is well capable of. Don't let that put you off either this book or James Herbert, because it's still darn good reading.

The ghosts of sleath is just a terrific book! This begin may not be very trilling, but the tension build up as the story goes on. A reeaally great twisting storyline, with many many many parts to keep you awake at night. The ending is absoulutely one not to be missed. (thats the spooOOookiest part)